Much Work to Do to Close Gender Pay Gap

More than 50 years since the passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, women still are paid just .80 cents for every dollar paid to men. Equal Pay Day (April 2) highlighted that glaring disparity, marking the number of days past Dec. 31, 2018 that women had to work to earn as much as men earned in all of 2018. The wage gap is even greater for women of color. The Bay Area Council’s Gender Equity and Diversity Committee is an advocate of closing the gender pay gap by engaging employers in the conversation and highlighting the business case for providing equal pay for equal work.

In 2016, our work culminated in the release of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute’s Building Gender Equity in the Workplace: A Best Practices Resource Guide, a collaborative effort with the Bay Area Council and the Representation Project. The report was included as one of the tools to advance pay equity by the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, which released its own Guide to Equal Pay the outlines five key strategies and provides helpful resources for addressing the gender pay gap. Among these strategies are pay transparency, starting pay equity at hiring, disrupting unconscious bias, and establishing business strategies to align with pay equity – key strategic actions that are also identified in the Economic Institute’s Best Practices Resource Guide. The Gender Equity and Diversity Committee continues to address and be active in promoting equal pay and gender equity policy areas such as paid family leave and advancing women as leaders. To engage with our Gender Equity and Diversity Committee, please contact Senior Vice President Linda Bidrossian.